Wednesday, September 21, 2011

One Day You'll Thank Us

Daveybloke's Welfare Police have been showing what compassionate Conservatism is all about by warning terminally ill people that their benefits may be cut. The Government intends to impose a time limit of one year on one particular benefit, which will mean that those receiving it could lose it in six months should the Lords prove as compassionate as the coalition. Faced with a remarkably small-societal reaction from the Disability Alliance, the DWP quickly extruded a spokesbeing to explain matters. "Speaking of terminal illness is clearly emotive," which handily explains and dismisses any objections in the name of humanity, civilisation and so forth; "and if they are on their deathbed they will clearly not be going back to work", not this year anyway. "They may be able to lead a normal life which could involve work", so the benefit cut is intended purely as an incentive for the genuinely idle terminally ill to get off their backsides and start making a contribution. Actually, it's all for their own good: "the process of working may even be helpful in giving them a sense of being useful and prolonging their lives." Indeed, like so many of the coalition's little economies, the cut is not intended as a cut but as an efficiency: "It is not some arbitrary target ... We must ensure that the benefit system has to be fair to taxpayers as well as disabled people." In order that this laudable goal may be attained, it has been necessary to sort one particular claimaint group into (a) terminally ill people who can prove they are on their deathbeds, and (b) terminally ill people who can still stack a shelf or flip a burger. Now, what could be wrong with that?